In the first part of our series on ‘connected spaces’, Concirrus looks at the factors that are likely to influence the future of the connected home.
With approximately 1.9 billion connected home devices being shipped by 2019 (bringing in $490 billion in revenue) [1] the connected home is landing right into our living rooms.
But as fast as this phenomenon might be moving into our lives, where is it taking us? And what does it need to do in order to achieve truly widespread adoption?
There is a simple, fundamental truth with which the widespread adoption of new technologies by humanity has always adhered to; there has to be a valid, ongoing human application that provides value within our lives. Or, to put it another way, it has to be useful. This may seem obvious, but amongst the noise of new domestic products and applications, providers that build this sentiment into the heart of their proposition will shine, and those that don’t will fail.
Take domestic electricity consumption for example. Across the world, household appliances and white goods are constantly running off electricity that comes from national power grids. As yet, national power grids have minimal capacity for localised storage. This largely means that supply has to constantly match demand and this can cause problems for power stations when demand surges (think of everyone boiling the kettle during half time on FA Cup Final day).
And herein lies the potential of IoT. What if the various energy-consuming items within our home were able to communicate with each other? What if, when you turn your kettle on, your fridge or freezer (or both) switches off for the duration of that kettle-boil? A small, perhaps minute amount of energy will be saved. Now consider replicating this across neighborhoods, cities, nations and continents and the saving starts to become substantial – exponentially so given the number of power consuming devices that can be added into the equation over time.
A small, specific example perhaps, but a principle that can be applied to a number of different situations within the home. Think of water consumption in dry suburban gardens, or smart heating solutions within high-rise communal urban buildings. Follow this through and it doesn’t require much imagination to see where such applications of connectivity and computing may take us. Greener, smarter societies, not to mention a noticeable saving on household energy expenditure.
So forget intelligent fridges that automatically re-order food from the supermarket. Who wants one of those? We’re interested in solutions to genuine, meaningful problems. Whether they be macro issues of societal consumption or personal issues of emotive preference, IoT is a tool that can offer the potential for huge leaps forward. And with the connected home being one of our most important cultural spaces, providers need to ensure that IoT solutions are offering something of value to the end user – us.
We’ll be watching with interest to see what else emerges over the coming months within the connected home space. In particular, here are five connected home trends Concirrus expect to see more of in the coming year. We’re not advocating the developments mentioned below (neither are we condemning them), but we thought we’d give you a brief, albeit sometimes light-hearted, round-up:
Turning our homes into hubs
From smart light bulbs that turn on or off as people move around their house, to an app that informs you when your indoor plants need more sunlight; the Internet of Things will turn our homes into hubs of effortless efficiency.
Kitchen
Yes, as mentioned, our fridge will be able to let us know when we’ve run out of quail eggs…but perhaps more intriguingly it will be able to get a freshness reading of the produce within our fridge. C2sense is becoming one of the first chips to give computers a sense of smell. The chips can detect up to four different types of gas – small levels of ethylene for example, which signal when fruit begins to ripen and which ripens other fruit more quickly. Cue knowing when you need to get rid of the soggy cucumber before it turns your entire fridge rotten.
Garden
If you’re always forgetting to maintain your garden, there’s a number of IoT devices out there that will alert you when your plants need watering (or trigger a smart water valve and do it for you perhaps). Not only that, but they will also monitor how much sunlight your geraniums are getting, their temperature and how much fertilizer they need. Parrot’s Flower Power and Edyn’s Smart Garden Probe are existing examples of this.
Lighting
The potential for energy-saving with smart home-lighting systems is obvious, but other developments are afoot. Once you’ve fiddled about setting them up, the Phillips Hue, Wi-Fi enabled LED light bulbs, can be controlled from your phone with Apple’s Homekit or Amazon’s Alexa. One bulb has a multitude of options…change the colour, dim them down or turn them from cool to white. You can also create commands and triggers using sites such as IFTTT to make them even smarter. Turn your porch light on as your car pulls into the drive, or make them flash when your football team scores!
Temperature
Another obvious source of energy consumption and expenditure. With both Nest and Hive (domestic thermostat systems) beginning to operate open source networks (something we at Concirrus approve of), the potential for innovative players to help pioneer truly smart domestic energy solutions is huge.
Nothing will ever break again!
With the Internet of Things, manufacturers are able to monitor appliances and, through predictive analytics, can detect defects before they cause a breakdown. At Concirrus we use this technology to monitor airport x-ray machines and baggage handling systems (see our case study here.)
When it comes to our connected cozy home, the likelihood of having to deal with broken appliances is dramatically reduced. Imagine a world where an engineer sends you a text to tell you that he’s going to visit your home at your convenience within the next two days because your boiler is signaling a (potential) problem. It’s the ability to predict problems, in real-time, before they actually occur that is one of the greatest strengths of algorithmic computing and artificial intelligence. Winter is coming? Broken boilers in the middle of January may soon be a thing of the past, and this raises interesting questions as to how the boiler care/energy industry will develop over the next few years. Who will win? Who will lose out? Consider, a large proportion of British Gas’ business is currently vested in their boiler care service – an asset that affords them valuable face to face contact time with their (existing and potential) customers. What would happen if individual boiler manufacturers woke up to the power of predictive analytics and decided to provide instantaneous part replacement and maintenance services to their customers, before their boilers broke?
Smarter Security
Despite our myriad garden, kitchen and lighting gadgets, protecting our home and the people inside it is one of our key concerns. In fact, perception of security within IoT is likely to be one of the major cultural stumbling-blocks standing in the way of mainstream adoption (it deserves a blog post in itself). But developers are starting to offer solutions. We’re not saying they’re the answer to our problems, but here are two examples that have recently stood out:
Blink
Seen at CES 2016, Blink, offers a simple, inexpensive home-security system consisting of a wireless camera that connects to your Wi-Fi network but stays in sleep mode unless motion is detected or the room temperature exceeds the limits you’ve set. Once that is triggered, the camera turns on and begins to record, as well as sending you an alert.
ADT Canopy
ADT Canopy is the security providers’ ‘Security-as-a-Service’ solution – a 24/7 professional home monitoring service in collaboration with the likes of Samsung SmartThings, Wink and August. If the connected-home hardware you buy supports the system, you can get the monitoring service with no long-term contract for as little as $20 a month.
Connected Home Insurance
Another crucial topic that is linked to security.
As Martin touched on in his recent post about the ‘Insurenet of things’ traditional home and car insurance has the opportunity for change. In fact, that’s an understatement. In the near future, insurance companies are likely to be divided into those that have adopted IoT, and those that used to exist. As we connect our heating, lighting and security systems together the connected home can provide insurers with reliable data, detailed security and could enable home insurance companies to change how they offer premiums.
A simple scenario: imagine you phone up an insurance provider and ask for a home insurance quote. They ask for your postcode and inform you that, according to their system, you live in a high-risk burglary area and because of this, your premium will be higher. Goddammit!
Now add in a twist. Your smart security or heating system (or both) are able to provide the insurance provider with data that informs them that your wife (or husband) is at home for most of the day during the week and that accordingly your house is rarely left empty. Suddenly you become a ‘low risk’ customer and your insurance premium quote is lowered. Food for thought.
Creating a seamless ecosystem
Our homes might be able to switch the lights off when no one is in a room but how many apps and products do we need to buy, set up and connect before our home is an effortless hub of secure, connected devices working together? Will we soon be buying pre-connected smart homes, rather than connected devices to make our homes smart?
Rule based automation systems for the Internet of Things may develop, such as IFTTT (If This Then That) which allow us to create one-to-one relationships with devices. But what we don’t want is to be limited by brand or compatibility; one trend we will be looking out for is the creation and adaption of an integrated, streamlined IoT ecosystem that works on the basis of an open source network.
With this achieved, not only will smooth ecosystems be able to integrate with one another seamlessly, but innovators and developers will be far more free to tinker, experiment and progress – crucial if we are to achieve tangible, meaningful solutions to real human problems.
[1] http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/02/06/17-internet-of-things-statistics-you-dont-know.aspx
Keep in touch with us on twitter @concirrus to stay up to date with the latest opinions and developments from the world of IoT and predictive analytics.
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